Romney to Europe: You're on your own

By REID J. EPSTEIN

06/17/2012 10:32 AM EDT

Mitt Romney says the United States is “not going to send checks to Europe” to stabilize the continent’s shaky economies and American banks will be able to withstand whatever shocks come from the aftermaths of Sunday’s Greek elections.

“We’re not going to bail out the European banks,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee told Bob Schieffer in an interview aired Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “We’re going to be poised here to support our economy, but I’m very much in favor of the fundamental things one does to strengthen the economic footings of a nation and as to what’s going to happen in Europe and what kind of impact that will have here, time will tell. But our banks are on a much stronger basis than they were at the time of the last economic crisis and they have built their capital base and their equity base and worked through a lot of their toxic assets, their toxic loans. And hope that regardless of what happens in Europe, that our banking sector is able to weather the storm.”

Romney said Europe can handle its own economic problems.

“Europe is capable of dealing with their banking crisis if they choose to do so,” he said. “Obviously, this is going to depend enormously on Germany. But they and others will have to make that decision but we don’t want to go in and start providing funding to European banks.”